Here is a quick one-shot that fits with the Detachment Attachment but won't get put into that story because it is from Elizabeth's POV, and so doesn't really fit with the story as a whole. It came to me this morning almost fully formed. However, it won't make much sense if you haven't been reading the Detachment Attachment. This pretty much fits somewhere around Chapter 13 (where Mary is having Elizabeth text with Darcy for her) and explains why there is a shift in Elizabeth's behavior in Chapter 16 (where we read about the texts Elizabeth exchanges with Darcy).

Realization

I woke up suddenly to darkness on Sunday morning. At first I had no idea of what woke me up, and then I remembered the trip to the emergency room to see about Mary's eye. She was fine now but my lingering worry must have woken me up.

I pulled the covers higher and tried to sink myself back into sleep, but then the images of a dream came back to me. I simply let them come.

I was on the bank of a pond surrounded by Monet's water lilies. They looked more like they were painted than real but they swayed a little with the water. It was a warm, sunny day and the colors were vivid.

In the distance was the arching bridge in one of Monet's paintings and I felt the need to reach the close side of it to cross to the other side. I had just reached the bridge when Degas's dancers came spilling out over it, a massive crowd of them in many brightly colored ballet gowns. They were dancing across the bridge. There were so many of them that they were pushing me back. They were all far taller than me, so I could not see over them, but I had the sense that they were surrounding something or someone. Still, I knew I had to go forward.

One of the dancers turned to me and it was Jane. She was one of the pink clad dancers and very graceful with her long, thin limbs. She danced on pointe around me, twirling and whirling.

I looked back to the dancers to see what was on the inside and then I saw that each of the other ballerinas was Caroline Bingley. Each Caroline jumped and twirled, flung outward like a top. They kept pushing me farther away from the bridge. The sun was now setting and I had to accomplish my task before night fell.

I had the sense that they were keeping Jane from Charlie. I tried to grab Jane's hand, to take her with me across the bridge, but her fingers slipped through mine and she spun and whirled away through the Carolines and then I could not see Jane anymore.

I fought my way onto the bridge, pushing, shoving, weaving between. I had to get to the center which I sensed was either on the bridge or on the other side. However, I keep having trouble making progress on the bridge, which somehow looped on itself so that I kept being back at the beginning of it. Or perhaps they shoved me back to the beginning more than I made progress through it.

The dancers were more tightly grouped the more I pressed on. Still, somehow they kept on dancing, colliding with me as they pirouetted and plied and whatever else they were doing, but continuing on as if unaware of hitting me. I planned to find Charlie, grab him and then go look for Jane. I knew they would dance beautifully together. I felt a sort of urgency, it was twilight and I needed to find him before the light was gone.

I reached the other side of the bridge and with more space the dancers seemed to thin. Finally, I reached a sort of empty clearing. It was dark now, but there was a full moon, illuminating the pond to my left. I could see a figure in the clearing to my right, half in shadow. It was a man who seemed to have dark hair. He was standing with his back to me, attired in tight white tights and nothing else. His back muscles rippled as he bent and swayed this way and that.

I knew I had to get to him, that he was in charge, but somehow I couldn't move. He began dancing away from me and then spun and leaped across the clearing, his legs forming a mid-air split. He circled behind me in a sort of corkscrew pattern, drawing ever nearer to me, as if mistaking me for a ballerina who would dance with him.

I felt myself rise onto my toes and then suddenly I was on pointe, delicate white ribbons laced around my calves, white tights with a short gauzy skirt and I could move, had to move, had to dance. He was my partner. He lifted me from the waist, tossed me, spun me and I was doing it, doing all of it perfectly although I did not remember learning any of it. Then I was pressed into him, his hand against my waist, supporting me while my right leg pressed straight up against his bare chest, my heel resting against his shoulder while my other leg was still straight down, my left toe shoe sliding against the ground, perfectly in the splits.

Then he lifted me up by my waist and I soared towards the sky, dark and glittering with stars, my back arched and my face tipped back. I was part of the velvet night, part of everything, but still connected to him.

A moment later, I came down, cradled in the man's strong arms. Arms that would never drop me. Instead of the night sky, all I could see was his face with its dark eyes. He was staring at me while our chests heaved from the exertion of the dance. I wanted him to kiss me, but I knew it wasn't part of the dance.

That was where the dream ended. I wanted to reenter the dream, to have that kiss which was promised me from the look in his eyes. But, who had I been dancing with? I knew those eyes but from where?

Then I knew. The dancer was Darcy.

I thought through the dream again, analyzed it with my rational mind. Tried to assign meaning. The initial setting was all about Jane. I had been with her as she shopped online for art prints when we had first moved into our apartment. She had wanted to do our whole living room up with water lilies, but I had talked her out of it. Instead, she bought two smaller water lily prints for her bedroom and the prints of the paintings that had hung in our living room.

The looping bridge was like one of Mary's Escher prints. Mary had talked about feeling stuck before, in a cycle where nothing really changed. It was strange that she would like pictures depicting that. But when I finally crossed and broke free of that Mobius strip, the clearing was rather like the yard at my parents' house.

I recalled how everything else had fallen away once I reached the clearing. There were no Carolines, no Jane, and the rest of the setting had just gone away. It was just me and him in the moonlight, dancing, being drawn together. It had felt wondrous.

Caroline wasn't a dancer as far as I knew, but it made sense that she had formed the blockade. I knew she had been opposed to Charlie settling down with Jane, wanted Darcy for herself. I did not think that the Darcy in the dream had danced with any of the Carolines. He had been waiting, waiting for me.

I knew with certainty then that I was attracted to him, wanted to be the focus of his attention. But did Darcy feel that way about me? He shouldn't, not with how coldly I had acted toward him. I had blamed him entirely for trying to separate Charlie and Jane, when the dream revealed that it had been Caroline coming between them.

I recalled then that there was no music for any of the dancing. How could dancers dance with no music? The Carolines danced as a group, but at the same time they danced solo.

Jane had danced away from me. I had tried to help her, but she had gone away. Had she been dancing toward Charlie? I could not take her with me. The journey on the bridge was one I had to take alone.

But then Darcy and I had danced together. Clearly dancing with him was some sort of an analogy. But what was it an analogy for?

When I danced with Darcy our bodies had been moving together. What was that like? It hit me then. Boy oh boy, dancing was an analogy for sex. Clearly I must want Darcy, at least deep down in my animalistic sleeping brain.

But what did the rest of me feel toward him? Chemistry is one thing, but I want a relationship, I want respect and love.

Perhaps if Jane and I still lived in the same apartment, I would have knocked on her door and confided in her no matter what the time, asked her for some advice. But she wasn't there, it was just Mary, and I certainly wasn't going to wake up my injured sister.

Eventually I fell back asleep. If I dreamed after that, I do not remember those dreams. When I got up all I wanted was a hot shower to wake me up, but once I was in the shower I remembered dancing with Darcy, our embrace as I had never embraced him in real life. As I washed my hair, I imagined us sharing a shower together, all hot and wet and slick.